Surveyors and
ship's officers should discuss documentation details and the location and state
of all compartments. The instruction pages of the stability information book
and calibration tables should be studied and a check made of the tank
capacities with the capacity plan. It should be remembered that the port and
starboard tanks may not be the same and consequently have separate calibration
tables.

The base for
measurement of vertical heights, the reference point for longitudinal
measurements, the units and the sign conventions used in the tables must all be
verified. The units used in the correction tables should also be carefully
noted because there is sometimes a mixture of units and sign conventions
contained within the same documentation. The whole survey should be conducted
using the units of the ship and the final result changed to a suitable unit, if
necessary. When feet and inches are the standard unit, convert to feet and
decimals of a foot for the convenience of a calculator.

The full sounding
depths of tanks, the summer draught and freeboard and the record of recent tank
soundings should be noted.